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Sunday, November 01, 2009

Michael Moore versus capitalism by Brian Jones

In France, you pay nothing to go to college. In Britain, the National Health Service is free. And in Sweden, any woman who gives birth receives two years of paid maternity leave.

Meanwhile, in the richest country on the planet, the United States, college graduates are buried in debt, medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, and if you have children — well, you’re on your own.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the former countries have formidable labour unions and even independent parties of labour. In the US, we have no such labour party.

But we do have Michael Moore.

His new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, is at turns infuriating, hilarious, shocking and inspiring.

He could have made a film just about the financial crisis, or just about the foreclosures, or just about Wall Street, but he didn’t. Moore made a film about the whole damn system.

His work is both an expression of a new consciousness and a catalyst for its development. Millions of people will find, in this film, confirmation of their own ideas, frustrations and aspirations.

Crucially, Moore reminds us of the high hopes that were invested in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

Obama talked about “redistribution”, and for that, the right wing labe’led him a "socialist," which only made him more popular, and left young people curious about “the S word”.

But this isn’t a film about socialism. It’s a film about capitalism.

And yes, it’s a love story.

In many ways, Capitalism plays like a long-delayed sequel to Roger and Me, the film that put Moore on the map precisely 20 years ago. Like Roger, Capitalism makes clever use of vintage propaganda reels and home movies, and casts Moore as a barnstorming muckraker, pounding on the doors of power with cameras rolling.

The love story begins with Moore’s own home movies, through which we experience his nostalgia for the middle-class lifestyle his family enjoyed, based on the once-thriving automobile industry in Flint, Michegan.

In exchange for their loyal service, workers could count on jobs for life, family wages and a good pension.

But that social contract was shredded in the 1970s, and Moore runs down the numbers on-screen with graphs that explain our pain — workers’ growing productivity versus their stagnating wages versus the corporations’ skyrocketing profits.

Moore tours us around the “heartland” — foreclosures in Cleveland, evictions in Peoria, young people incarcerated for profit in Wilkes-Barre — and asks what all of these things have in common.

The answer: each is an example of how the free market works against human needs.

We are shown a leaked Citigroup memo that boasts of the results of Wall Street’s unbridled profiteering. The US has become a “plutonomy”, the memo gloats, where 1% of the population owns and controls almost everything.

The memo warns about a lingering danger — everyone else still has 99% of the vote — and asks: “Is there a backlash building?”

Enter Barack Obama.

On virtually every issue that matters, Obama has deeply disappointed his supporters. Capitalism, however, takes us back to a moment when the Obama campaign mobilised the very backlash Citigroup foresaw.

Moore shows us the faces of people — particularly African Americans — living through a moment of extraordinary change: Election Night 2008.

We see the tears of joy, the dancing in the streets, and we remember the feeling that things were changing for the better in this country.

Enter Goldman Sachs.

Moore shows how “Government Sachs” alumni worked in the Bush administration and in the Obama administration to manipulate the financial crisis to their advantage — at our expense.

Moore shows up on Wall Street with empty sacks to “get the money back for the American people”. It’s pure shtick, but the point still lands — these people wrecked the economy and were rewarded with trillions of our dollars.

Moore is happy to skewer Democrats and Republicans alike for corruption and corporate cronyism. However, he leaves the question more open regarding Obama.

Viewers may be shocked to see and hear the footage of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt arguing that jobs, homes, education and, yes, health care should be guaranteed to all US people under a new bill of rights.

We should keep in mind that FDR was speaking in a context of a labour movement that was organising near-insurrections in several US cities — and was on the brink of forming its own political party.

One gets the feeling the intended audience for this film isn’t only those who are questioning capitalism, but also Obama himself. Moore seems to be saying to the president: “You don’t have to be a corporate tool, you could be an FDR.”

But there is another, more radical dimension of the film that mainstream reviewers have missed: Moore points to solutions beyond what Obama may or may not do.

He points to what we could do to replace capitalism.

“There's got to be a rebellion”, says a man in the process of being evicted from his home in Illinois, “between the people that have nothing and the people that have it all”.

But what would that rebellion look like? What is the alternative to the free market?

Here, Moore turns our attention to the arena that does the most to define our lives — the workplace. Most workplaces, he says, are “dictatorships”, with zero democracy.

But is democracy possible at work?

Capitalism takes us inside the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago, where workers staged an old-fashioned occupation of the plant when it faced closure without workers getting promised severance pay.

Inside the occupied factory, we see workers meeting, discussing and making decisions together.

Moore shows us a worker-owned robotics plant, where employees make collective, democratic decisions about their work.

Moore is introducing the audience to a fundamental idea of socialism — workers’ democracy.

There’s much more to the case for socialism than this film takes up. But Moore is expressing something basic about what's wrong with the system we live under, and what could replace it.

“Capitalism is evil”, he says, “and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something else ... with democracy.”

For people without health care, who are losing their jobs and losing their homes, the love affair with the free market is already over. They may not know what the solution is, but many are ready to discuss the fact that capitalism itself is the problem.

In other words, being ready to break up isn’t the same thing as finding someone new. But millions of people are starting to look.

Go ahead and make the breakup official — get yourself to the nearest socialist meeting. And while you're at it, bring three or four of your friends with you.

[Brian Jones is a teacher, actor and activist in New York City. His commentary and writing has featured on GritTV, SleptOn.com and in the International Socialist Review. This article is slightly abridged from www.socialistworker.org.]

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"A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction." Graham Greene

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It's been a learning experience for me operating this blog but there is an insatiable hunger for alternative news and opinion on a range of issues in Australia that is often ignored or sidelined by the corporate media and an increasing self censored and Murdoch managed ABC.

Journalists and Writers I Like.

"Bread and work and love, the poor man’s trinity, and by all three needs they chain him down." Christina Stead 1902-1983 Seven Poor Men of Sydney

"Every government is run by liars and nothing should be believed." I.F.Stone 1907-89

"I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult." Arthur Miler 1915-2005

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell 1903-50

"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understandig the hidden agendas of the message that surrounds it." John Pilger

"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more." Joesph Heller 1923-99

"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism." Graham Greene 1904-91

"My experience in the First World War and now the Second World War [his son Barney was killed in the Battle of Singapore] changed my outlook on things. It is hard to believe that there is a God. I feel the Bible is a book written by man but for the purpose of preying on a person’s conscience, and to confuse him. Anyone who taken part in a bayonet charge (and I have) [Gallipoli], and has managed to retain his proper senses, must doubt the truth of the Bible and the powers of God, if one exists. And considering the many hundreds of different religions that there are in this world of ours, and the fact that many religions have caused terrible wars and hatreds throughout the world, and that many religions that have hoarded tremendous wealth and property while people inside and outside religion are starving , it is difficult to remain a believer. No Sir, there is no God, it is only a myth." Albert Facey 1894-1982 A Fortunate Life

"Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party." David Ireland 1927- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

"Prime Minster Howard I’ve heard You met George Bush and the Pope too, I understand, Oh I liked the Pope much better, I only had to kiss his hand." L’Amour Denis Kevans 1939-2005

"The first law of journalism-to confirm existing prejudice rather than contradict it." Alexander Cockburn

"The Labour Party [ALP], starting with a band of inspired Socialists, degenerated into a vast machine for capturing political power, but did not know how to use the power when attained except for the profit of individuals[...] Such is the history of all Labour organisations in Australia, and not because they are Australian , but because they are Labour..." Victor Gordon Childe 1892-1957, How Labour Governs

"The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work." Neal Ascherson, 1932- Games with the Shadows, Policing the Marketplace.

"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. " Major General Smedley Butler,1881-1940

"What is the crime of robbing a bank compared with the crime of founding one." Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?" Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

[Battler]" a conscientious person working against many odds to make a living; one whose life is a constant struggle.’ Battlers maybe men or women; black or white. They rarely deal with racism (the negative side of our tradition) because they sympathise with anyone facing adversity or unfair criticism. The term ‘battler’ is a state of mind-a traditional attitude which goes back to the convict era, when the battler was on a flogging to nothing but fiddled around the rules and held his masters in contempt. The battlers are aware that they are being lied to by....politicians; and they suspect that Keating’s warning that Australia could become a banana republic is in fact, happening before their eyes." Frank Hardy 1917-1994. Retreat Australia Fair 1990

I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. Brendan Behan 1923-64

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.” Arundhati Roy